Lindy raced down the field with the ball neatly tucked between her feet, her hair flying out behind her like birthday party streamers.

Trip, Jillian thought, but Lindy kept right on going. What did Lindy have against her? Did she stink or something? Sofia was the only one who would have told her, and she was an ocean away.

Mark’s mother, in her usual black suit, walked over to the field with two strangers. There must be a house for sale—she never came to games. Look up, Jillian told Mark through ESP. She’d read a book about it, and it was real. A tall boy on the other team had stolen the ball from Lindy and had sent it toward the goal. Look out!

She watched Mark the way she’d watched the film of President Kennedy’s assassination in her English class last fall, with a dark sense of inevitability. Her teacher had shown it to mark the anniversary of Kennedy’s death. The kids thought it was cool—gross, but cool—but the parents went crazy when they heard about it. They bombarded the school with angry calls and letters about the inappropriateness of it until the teacher resigned. It was too bad because he’d been one of the nice ones.

Mark yawned up at the trees. Meanwhile Lindy took off after the ball, her teeth bared. She threw herself between the ball and the goal and tried to block it. The blade of grass in Jillian’s hand broke. A cheer went up from the other team just as the whistle blew.

“IT STARTED OUT AS A STREETCAR SUBURB AT THE TURN OF THE LAST century,” Nina narrated when they were back in the car again, the home team having lost rather spectacularly. Suzanne took it all in. She wasn’t sorry she’d agreed to one final stop for the day. Not sorry at all.

Nina was talking about nuts. The streets were named after them. The street they were on, Almond Avenue, was clearly the showcase street, wide, with old, well-maintained houses where trees grew tall and swings hung from high branches. They passed a Victorian with a wraparound porch, where two little girls sat on a swing, a dog at their feet. Suzanne imagined the girls away, replacing them with herself and Adam. Then she put the girls back again. What could they possibly find in their price range here? Everything was so much more expensive around Washington. She’d known it was going to be bad, but not this bad.

Nina rolled down the window. “Hi, Madeline. Your puppy is getting so big, Jordan!” The girls looked at her as if they had never seen her before. If things were better between her and Grant, Suzanne would have caught skeptical eyes with him—but they weren’t good. Not good at all.